


Homecoming

by LaVieEnRose



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Allergies, Alternate Canon, Asthma, Canon Disabled Character, Canon Universe, Disability, Disabled Character, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reunions, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-21 00:30:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16566131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaVieEnRose/pseuds/LaVieEnRose
Summary: Prom didn't work out so well. How about a homecoming?A bit of season 3, reimagined.





	1. Hiatus

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter 1 was originally posted as "Hiatus" and Chapter 2 as "The Thing About Fairy Tales" as stories 76 and 77 of the "The One Where Justin Loses His Hearing" series, but because they take place before any of the canon-divergent events of that series, they work as a standalone and here they are. There are little references to the series but nothing that should be too distracting.
> 
> Chapter 1 from Brian's POV, the much longer Chapter 2 is from Justin's.

A million years ago, when Justin was living with the fiddler, his eyes were always swollen.

It's not as if I was keeping watch over him, or anything like that, and honestly that's not even me being in denial here. I was trying my fucking hardest not to goddamn look at him at all, so there was no careful monitoring of the boy's condition happening, not at that point. But he still worked at the diner and I still had to live in this town, so I saw him, and I did notice, after it was literally _every time,_ that Justin's eyes were always swollen.

I was paying my bill at the counter one afternoon and Kiki came over to Debbie and started whispering, if you can call it whispering when it's as loud as most people shouting. “I don't think he's happy with the new boyfriend,” Kiki said. 

“Who?” Deb said.

Kiki gave me a long, pointed look I ignored, then turned back to Deb. “He always looks like he's just been crying, have you noticed?” she said. “I think it's the boyfriend.”

“It's his allergies,” I said, drawing it out so I'd sound nice and bored.

They both had the nerve to look at me like they hadn't known I was there.

“He's not crying,” I said. “He has allergies.” I took my change back from Debbie. “He's perfectly happy.”

**

The weather cooled down, though, and Justin's allergies didn't hibernate like they were supposed to. At first when the temperature dropped and Justin was sneezing every damn time I saw him I assumed he'd caught a cold, and it brought back uncomfortable memories of him in the loft the winter before, curled up impossibly small under a blanket on the couch. I figured he probably didn't have much cash for anything other than essentials, so I bought a bag of those nasty cherry cough drops he loves and if I ate at the diner without any fucking rubberneckers I'd leave a few with my tip. He always thanked me.

A month passed, though, and the sneezing never stopped, and the swelling around his eyes didn't go down, and I'd hear him coughing in the diner's back room. His shift ended one day while I was still at the diner, and I tapped my fingers on the table as he left, then mumbled, “Fuck it,” and got up and followed him out to the sidewalk. “Justin?” I said, over the bells on the door tinkling behind me. His name felt strange in my mouth, and I wondered how long it had been since I'd said it out loud. 

He turned around and gave me a vague smile, rubbing one eye as he walked over. He'd done the poster for me at this point, showed up at the Carnivale, all that jazz, and we were friendly to each other. 

His eyes were red-rimmed and puffy and his skin was pale where it wasn't flushed pink under his nose. His hair was longer by then and his bangs never lay right. I'd given up trying not to look at him. 

I put my hands in my pockets. “I'm going to ask you a personal question, okay?”

He bit back a grin. “I'm sure I'm powerless to stop you.” He was wheezing softly, but he usually does when it's cold. I didn't think much of that at the time.

“Do you need money?”

He shook his head, which honestly wasn't what I had been expecting, which was something closer to _go to hell, Brian_ and a determined stomp away that would absolutely confirm that he _did_ need money. This...maybe meant he actually didn't.

“Okay...” I said. “You can afford your meds and everything?”

Now he just looked confused. “Yeah, I have insurance through school, remember? It has drug coverage.”

“Oh. Right.”

“I pay like twenty dollars a month for everything.” The look on his face dared me to ask him if he had twenty dollars.

I felt fucking impossibly awkward. “Okay. Well...good. Glad you're doing well.”

“Thanks. You too. I'll see you around.”

Ethan called me eight hours later.

**

The call was from Justin's phone. Otherwise I probably wouldn't have picked up.

It wasn't the first time he'd called me in the middle of the night. The bashing was only just over a year behind us at this point, and he was still not okay in ways that took me goddamn ages to even start to see. Until the last month or so of us living together, the nightmares had been mostly under control. Maybe once every two weeks he'd have a whole dragged out hyperventilating affair, and in-between he'd have mornings he'd be shaky and out of sorts for a while, but it was nothing compared to the shit we'd endured when he first moved in. And when he started losing his hearing, though obviously that was a ways down the line.

Though I am not going to pretend I don't look back on those phone calls he'd make when he was living with Ethan, when he'd call me crying from the bathroom because I was the only one who could convince him not to hurt himself to try to shut up the screaming inside of him, and remember when he'd asked me to repeat things. I'd assumed he was just panicking and not paying attention. And maybe that's all it was.

He's always hated phone calls. He's always zoned out during conversations and it's always been hard to get his attention. 

Now, it's possible those are just personality quirks. The narrative is that Justin didn't start losing his hearing until his twenties. And maybe he didn't.

And it's not as if it matters.

But yes, sometimes I wonder.

Anyway, when my phone rang at three in the morning and I groped for it on the nightstand and saw his number, I took a deep breath and sat up, prepared to talk him down from a panic attack. It had been a while, but it's not really something you forget how to do. I just needed a minute to steel myself for him crying, honestly. You don't get used to that.

I picked up the phone and said, “Evening, Sunshine.”

But there was no panicked breathing on the other line, just a weird sort of whistle in the background, and then a voice that was definitely _not_ Justin's said, “Brian?”

“Who the fuck is this?”

“It's Ethan.”

I got out of bed. “What the fuck do you want?”

“I think something's wrong with Justin.”

“You _think_ something's wrong with Justin?” I pulled on a pair of jeans. 

“Okay...something's wrong with Justin.”

“Well, where the fuck is he? Put him on the phone.”

“He can't...he's not...” And then I pieced together what that whistling in the background was.

And really, really hoped that it wasn't, because I had never heard him sound that bad, not when he'd fucked up his lungs sobbing through the worst of the panic attacks, not the time he had the brilliant idea to help Debbie rake leaves, not when he'd come down with goddamn walking pneumonia the year before. “Ethan.”

“Yeah.”

“Is that his breathing?”

“Yeah.”

“What the fuck.”

“His inhaler's not working,” Ethan said. “I don't know what—”

“What the fuck do you mean, you don't know what to do? It's pretty goddamn straightforward, you need to take him to the fucking hospital.”

“He won't go.”

“Yeah, he hates it. Tell him I say he has to go.”

Ethan says, “The student insurance doesn't cover ambulances, and we don't have a car.” _We._ “Can you just—”

“Text me your address, and do not fucking kill him before I get there,” I growled, and hung up.

**

Ethan's building was about a sneeze away from collapse, so, you know, risky bet bringing Justin here, and that was before I'd even seen the inside. Ethan had unlocked the door for me, sensitive little fellow that he is, and the first thing I saw when I came in was a fucking cat pacing the floor.

Now, let me get one thing out of the way, because this is true and I'm going to assume something you wouldn't have guessed about me; I'm actually quite fond of cats. Michael and Debbie had one when we were in high school, this ancient all black tomcat named Doug, and I thought he was the shit. They're affectionate and they're clean and they mind their own fucking business, unlike dogs always trying to worm their way into your crotch. What's not to like?

Well, Justin—who also likes them, because he has never had any innate sense whatsoever of what's good for him, and thank my fucking stars for that—is fucking mind-numbingly allergic, to the extent that he once pet a stray outside the diner—like I said—and his entire arm broke out in hives. God only fucking knows how his liver hadn't failed from the fucking astronomical doses of his allergy meds he must have been taking to survive living with one.

And if that weren't enough, the entire place was carpeted, which Justin cannot do, and it was a fucking dusty pig sty, and there was a splotch of mold on the ceiling and...I mean, Christ, do I need to go on? 

What the fucking goddamn fuck was he thinking living here? 

So I was all piss and vinegar as I stormed into the bedroom, and maybe you'd think the sight of little Sunshine wheezing his brains out would lessen that but yeah, no. And God, he was a fucking mess, too. He was sitting on the side of the bed with his arms wrapped all the way around his chest, and Ethan was pacing in front of him, bothering him with questions he couldn't answer about did he want some fucking water or something.

“Help has arrived,” I said. Ethan looked up and made that _Oh thank God_ face that men usually do when they see me, but Justin did't even react, which didn't give me a good feeling about how aware he still was of what was around him because...I mean, say what you want about Sunshine's little time off, here, but we can always get something out of each other.

I came around to his side of the bed and crouched in front of him and lifted his chin until he met my eyes. Sweat was beading on his forehead from the effort of fucking getting air in, and his breathing was choked and wet and squeezed to almost nothing, and he had enough hives that I wished I'd brought the fucking epipen. He didn't even look scared, just...resigned.

“No,” I told him. “None of that. You are not dying in this shithole.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, dying?” Ethan said. “No one's dying. Nobody's fucking dying.”

“Does he have an off switch?” I asked Justin, taking his pulse.

Justin tried to suck in a breath, and I can't pretend that watching him struggle like that wasn't making my own chest feel tight. You try fucking listening to how hard he has to work to do shit that should be easy and not have feelings about it. 

“We're going to the hospital now,” I said. “Don't give me any shit.”

He just nodded, and...you have to understand what a big fucking deal it is for Justin to not put up a fight about going to the hospital. How goddamn terrible he has to feel to give in to that. 

I nodded for Ethan to come around to Justin's other side. I leaned into Justin's ear, growled, “You have a lot of fucking explaining to do,” gave him a rough kiss on the cheek, and we hauled him off to the emergency room.

**

It took, and I say this as objectively as possible, a fucking scary amount of intervention that night before Justin was breathing again. I was stuck filling out paperwork for most of it, guessing at shit like Justin's medication dosages and current weight—he'd definitely lost some—while Ethan fussed around like a worried fucking mother. Which, speaking of: I was not calling Jennifer. That was his fucking responsibility now. 

Every couple of minutes I'd stop to ask myself why the fuck I was still here, but I never ended up leaving. The doctors were fucking worried about Justin and ended up admitting him for the night, and it took all these fucking antihistamines and steroids and ages on oxygen before his lungs were in working order again, and I wasn't even with him for most of it because...I don't know. Ethan was.

But eventually Ethan left—to call Jennifer—and Justin and I were alone. He had an IV and a mask over his mouth and he looked very young, sitting there with his chin on his knees, breathing so carefully like he was afraid it was going to be snatched away from him again any moment.

“Are you going to yell at me?” he said.

“You bet your fucking ass I'm going to yell at you.”

“I'm really sick. Can you do it later?”

“No, I didn't do it when I was at that fucking shithole apartment, this _is_ the later. What the fucking fuck were you thinking?”

“I—”

“You have no _fucking_ business thinking you can survive living in that fucking mold-infested shithole with a goddamn cat. I ought to have fucking killed you myself. You looked me in the eyes today and told me you were fine.”

“I told you I could afford my medicine,” he said. He was so hoarse. I shouldn't have been yelling at him right then. 

“Don't you fucking split hairs with me, Sunshine. I was under the fucking understanding you weren't being a total goddamn fucking moron, but—”

“Under what fucking understanding?” I said. “What, when you chose Ethan as my fucking babysitter? I didn't get your approval. Why is it any of your fucking business where I live?”

“You know exactly why it's my fucking business and don't you give me that shit.” 

Fuck him for acting like this was over. Like this could ever be over. 

But he said, “I know, I know,” and then wheezed his way into an absolutely fucking wrecked bout of coughing. I got him some water.

“This isn't a fucking joke,” I said. “I've never known you to be this goddamn reckless. I have half a mind to call your fucking shrink and tell her you're suicidal, because I can't think of any other fucking reason you'd think to live in a place like that.”

“Fuck off, Brian,” he said, so tired.

“What did you think was going to happen? I am honestly asking you. You thought what, true love could conquer all, is that it? Even allergies? Who raised you to be this fucking stupid, because I know it wasn't your mother and it sure as fuck wasn't me.”

He sneezed pathetically. 

“Answer me,” I said.

“Answer _what?_ ”

“If this is over,” I said. “If this has been enough to snap you out of your little fucking fairy tale and you're ready to stop fucking playing _Leave it to Beaver_ with allergies or whatever you want to call this horror show of a home life you've concocted.”

He blinked at me. “What, you think I'm going to leave him because I had an asthma attack? I'll figure out a solution, Brian.”

“You know what the fucking solution is.”

“What, go back to waiting for you to spare me a fucking glance and feeling like shit all the time?”

“How exactly the fuck do you feel right now?”

“It's the apartment!” he yelled, or as close as he could. “It's not the fucking relationship! I'm not taking this as some fucking sign from God, and you can cut it the fuck out with lecturing me like I fucking owe you some—”

“Owe me what, your fucking health? Your goddamn life?”

He pinched his nose.

“If you're honestly telling me you're going back to that fucking death trap because you want to prove to me how fucking goddamn independent you are—”

“I am not proving fucking anything to you, Jesus Christ! This has nothing to do with you!”

“This was cute at first,” I said. “You and the fiddler, you've got the dark and light thing going on, you're all fresh-faced and full of dreams, you're fucking artists, it's very sweet, I get it.”

“Fuck you,” he said.

“All I fucking asked is if it was over. You think he's going to choose you over the furball?”

“And all I fucking did was tell you you were fucking crazy for thinking this was going to end things. It's not a fucking experiment, Brian.”

“Oh, so you're happy? That's what you're telling me?”

He set his jaw. “He loves me.”

“Of course he fucking loves you!” I said. “He doesn't fucking know you!” Fuck this kid. Fuck him to the fucking ground. “He's known you for five fucking minutes, he loves your smile and your ass and your fucking spaghetti bolognese, you want to see how long that lasts? Wait until you've been in his fucking face for two years, you won't take no for a goddamn answer on the pettiest fucking shit, you leave your fucking shit everywhere and you scare him half to death every time he fucking blinks, wait until he fully fucking internalizes what a reckless goddamn shit you are and what bad fucking decisions you're so fucking convinced you're mature enough to make, you wait and see if he loves you when he's been waking up beside you for a fucking year and falling asleep next to you every fucking night and he's watching you walk out the fucking door and scraping you off the fucking floor of a goddamn parking garage, you let me know if he's still fucking buying you roses.”

Justin wheezed and watched me.

“No one should be buying you fucking roses,” I said.

He swallowed and whispered, “Brian, I'm too fucking sick for this.”

“I know.”

“If you have something to say, can you just...”

I was so goddamn tired at this point, you have to understand.

I said, “I just want to know if you're ready to come home.”

He looked at me for a long time.

“No,” he said. “Not yet.”

I ran my hand over my mouth. “Okay. Well you're not going back to that fucking apartment.”

Ethan came in and went straight to Justin and hugged him for a long time. Justin clung, but he watched me over his shoulder. 

“How do you feel?” Ethan said, pressing a kiss to Justin's forehead. “God, you scared the shit out of me.”

“I'm okay,” Justin said. “I swear this hardly ever happens. But...we have to make some changes or it's going to happen again.”

“Of course,” Ethan said. “First thing tomorrow I'm going to call about getting the place cleaned. Like really cleaned. Do you think Daphne would let us crash at her place while that's getting done?”

“He can't live with a cat,” I said.

Ethan looked at me. Justin looked down.

“Look at him,” I said. “He can't live with a cat. It's amazing it took him this long before this happened. He's been walking around looking like shit for months. So what are you going to do?”

He wasn't going to give up the cat for a guy he'd been fucking for a few months. 

Ethan kissed next to Justin's eye. “Baby, of course. My mom can take Wolfie.”

“I'm sorry,” Justin said.

“Shh, no. You should have told me. Why didn't you tell me?”

_He can't,_ I wanted to scream, but I didn't. It wasn't my place anymore.

God. He was giving up the cat. 

Goddamn it. He fucking loved him. 

I left the hospital.


	2. The Thing About Fairy Tales

_So...where does this leave us?_

_Together. Because I'm not signing._

“You're home late,” Ethan said, as I dropped my keys in the basket by the door and kicked back on the door until the bloated wood squeaked its way into the frame. He was holding a bottle of wine, and I could see the soft glow of candles peeking out from the bedroom.

“Yeah, I had to meet with the student affairs coordinator.”

He scrunched his eyebrows.

“She sent me an email and I was freaking out all day thinking I was in trouble,” she said. “Turns out they want to feature me on the PIFA website.”

He took my coat from me and hung it up. “Why, because of your last show?”

“I don't know. She didn't say, but she made this whole thing about how she wants me to _tell my story,_ so I'm thinking it's some disability initiative thing.”

He kissed me with a small sigh. “I keep telling you,” he said. “Nobody but you sees yourself that way.”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “Yeah, I know.” I nodded towards the wine. “So what's this for? Christ, this stuff is expensive.”

He took my hand and pulled me into the bedroom. He'd put a tablecloth over the trunk where he keeps his clothes, and the makeshift table was set with glasses and small plates and a red rose.

And I realized for the first time that he looked nervous, and I knew.

“I've decided to sign the contract,” he said, needlessly.

**

_There's nothing noble about being poor._

_Where did you hear that?_

I found Brian in the back room, got the guy on his knees to fuck off, and shoved Brian back against the wall. He rolled his eyes.

So what you need to know is that before this, Brian and I had been doing pretty fucking well. I wouldn't call us friends, but we were cordial, and we weren't unkind to each other, and Brian came and got me when I was suffocating in Ethan's fucking apartment and he asked me if I was ready to come home.

And what I said was _Not yet._

I'm rehashing this so you understand that...before tonight, there had been some inevitability here. There was a ticking clock.

And now he had smashed it or I was about to fucking smash it, I didn't know, but it was gone. It was over.

He stared me down.

“You had no fucking right to talk to him,” I said. You had no fucking right to go behind my back and ruin my goddamn life like some petty jealous little junior high fuck. You ruined my fucking life, Brian, are you happy?”

Brian didn't even flinch. “You should be happy for him. He's going to be a big success. Don't you love him? Don't you want him to be happy?”

“Fuck off!”

He smirked, shaking his head slightly. “Go home and celebrate with your husband.”

“What the fuck do you want me to celebrate? What happens to me now?” he said.

“Christ, me, me, me. You think he should throw away his future for a boy he's been fucking for six months? You feel good asking someone you love passionately, deeply, _truly_ to do that? Is that your idea of true love, Sunshine?”

I felt like I was falling, like the sticky, sparkly ground under me had fucking disappeared, I don't know.

All this time he'd been poking around in my business, leaving me ridiculous tips at the diner, hiring me to make his fucking posters, and I honest to God thought it was because he still cared about me. And goddamn did I feel like a fucking idiot for that right then, because the truth was so obvious and tangible and curling its fucking lip:

He was waiting for the exact perfect moment to fuck over my life.

He wanted to make sure he was the center of it when everything fell down around me. Again.

And then he waved his hand dismissively and lit a cigarette. “You'll be fine. You're always fine.”

I was standing in front of him feeling like I was going to come apart, like if anybody brushed up against me I would literally come out of my goddamn skin, and the person who was supposed to know me better than anyone in the world was telling me I was always fine.

Honestly I think that hurt more than anything. It is fucking _excruciating_ to find out people haven't been seeing you.

That you have been so fucking disastrously goddamn wrong about everything and everybody around you.

I thought I felt about as fucking bad as I possibly could right in that minute, but you know: ha.

Still, it took me a moment before I could leave, before I could make myself stop searching his face looking for something, _any_ hint of regret for what he'd done to me. Anything to make me feel less fucking stupid for believing he'd given a shit about me all this time. I wanted him to fucking lead me on for one more second just so I'd feel like less of a fool.

He didn't, but on my way out I heard him say, “See, this is the thing about fairy tales, Sonny Boy,” and I didn't wait around to let him finish, because goddamn I needed whatever tiny victory I could get.

Someone touched my wrist on the way out of the club and I thought I would die.

**

_Justin, you almost died coming out. How could you go back in, for anyone?_

_I don't want to talk about it._

I walked away from my little smoke break with Daphne after Ethan introduced me as his cousin—his fucking cousin—and headed back towards Liberty. I had a shift in half a hour and negative time to dwell on this shit, though I didn't know how the fuck I was going to get through six hours there with the trouble my hand was giving me. I hadn't slept well the night before and it always gives me shit when I'm overtired. And, really, I hadn't slept well in a while at this point. A week, maybe. Time was all blurring together, conversations were getting fuzzy and far away and everything seemed out of color, and I'd had enough therapy at this point to know those were bad signs but not enough to want to do anything about that.

I turned the corner by the diner and was about to go inside when I saw this guy and this girl waiting for the walk signal at the corner. It took me a second to figure out where I knew them, but as soon as I did I was suddenly very aware of my heartbeat and the bottom of my throat and their overly delicate relationship to each other.

It was Mark and Emily (not my Emily—this is real life and Emily is a common name). They were in my graduating class at St. James, and what you need to understand if I'm going to tell this accurately is they'd never really given me any shit. Mark was on the football team so he laughed along with some jokes, and Emily was a cheerleader so she'd probably sneered at me if I ever dared to talk to her, but I had no reason to expect that they were going to come over here and start hassling me. And I definitely had no reason to believe they would ever actually cause me any physical harm.

It's important for clarity that you know that I wasn't actually in any danger when I had a massive fucking panic attack because I saw some straight people who knew me when I was in the closet.

Like I was again.

I don't remember ducking into the alley by the diner, but the next thing I knew I was leaning against the wall by the dumpster, my vision spotting out, as sure I was going to fucking die because I couldn't breathe as I was that night at Ethan's—my—apartment. I heard voices that I recognized but couldn't place, and for a minute I was sure, fucking sure, that it was Mark and Emily and a fucking baseball bat and I've already told you that isn't rational but I swear to you, this is not a metaphor; in that moment I was absolutely sure that I was going to die.

“Fuck off, go inside,” I heard, and there's no time in the world where I wouldn't know that voice. I couldn't lift my head up, couldn't see anything in my periphery, but in a moment Brian's shoes were in front of me, an inch away from mine, and I felt like there were ants under every bit of my skin.

“Go away,” I gasped.

“Justin.”

“Don't touch me, I mean it. Oh my God.”

He was quiet for a minute, then he said, his voice low, “What the fuck happened?”

“Go.”

“Did someone hurt you?”

“You fucking hurt me!” I sucked in a breath. “You ruined my fucking goddamn life and I can't _think_ and I can't _breathe_ and it's not _safe_ and nothing is goddamn ever going to be—”

“It's _okay,_ ” he said, in that fake-exasperated way he does.

“Can you please just go?”

“Stop being a fucking twat, I'm not going to—” he said, and he reached out and put his hand on my arm when I fucking told him not to, I told him, nobody was listening, nobody fucking saw me in the entire world, and everything flashed white.

So then I was balled up on the ground with my arms protecting my head because _no no no no no you are not going to hit me._

“Please,” I whispered.

“Fuck!” Brian said, and his voice didn't sound like his at this point. “Jesus, what the fuck...”

It took me a very long time to be able to speak.

He crouched down in front of me. “Okay. Okay. Just...just take a minute, Sunshine.”

Yeah, no. “Are you _happy now?_ ” I screamed at him. “Did you get what you fucking goddamn wanted?”

“Justin, breathe.”

I finally looked up at him, and he was pale, frozen, like he had been after a panic attack a very very long time ago, when I woke up on his bed—our bed—bathed in blue light. A lifetime ago, I would say, if I didn't already have a very clear before and after this lifetime, but we'll get to that.

Who the fuck am I kidding. We were already in that. We're always goddamn in that and nobody will goddamn listen when I tell them.

“What the hell did you think would happen?” I managed to say.

He shook his head a little. “I didn't...” he said, and if I was in any other sort of state I might have appreciated that I'd finally fucking surprised Brian Kinney.

_You're always fine._

“You fucking idiot,” I said.

He didn't object.

“Well, I'm going to break up with him!” I said. “I can't fucking live like this! I'm going to go home today and break up with him, so, congratulations. You got what you wanted.”

I'd never seen his eyes that big.

I sucked in a breath. “Now will you get. The _fuck. Out of here._ ”

**

So Brian left me in the alleyway and then I left Ethan, and then I had a very, very hard month. The period after I left Ethan was a lot harder than the one after I left Brian, and the reason why doesn't make me a very good person, but here we are.

It wasn't because I'd left Brian and gone right to Ethan, and this time I was leaving Ethan and going to nothing, though I'm not going to pretend that wasn't a factor. I hadn't been single since...well, it's debatable since when, but it had been a long time, we know that. And now here I was crashing on Daphne's couch, going to school, going to work, and falling asleep alone. I'm not going to tell you that didn't suck, but it wasn't why I was ducking into the diner bathroom to fucking cry during my breaks, why I failed two tests in a row and why I called in sick once a week when I literally couldn't get myself to put my feet on the floor.

The upside was now that I wasn't living with Ethan my allergies were better than they'd been in half a year, so at least I had enough oxygen for all my fucking crying.

The reason it was harder is before, when I walked out on Brian, I hadn't really lost anyone.

I'd known Brian and I weren't really done. You couldn't have been in the same zip code as Brian and I and not felt the fucking sexual tension the whole time I was Ethan. I told you; I heard the ticking clock. And I know that that isn't fair to Ethan or to Brian, but I already warned you that I wasn't a good person and...it's not like I planned for this to happen. And it's not as if I ever asked Brian to wait for me.

But I knew that he was. And I had a really, really nice time with Ethan for a lot of months. But it didn't feel sustainable. It always felt fragile.

I'm not going to pretend it wasn't really, really nice while it was.

But in the background there was always _Brian, Brian, Brian,_ like a heartbeat. Like a safety net. And I already said that that wasn't fair to him, so leave me alone.

And anyway, now he was gone, because he was not the fucking person I thought he was, and I couldn't go home because it was never my home, and Brian wasn't asking me to anymore.

And Brian was not my person, because Brian thought I would be fine with something I couldn't be fine with, and God, wasn't that just the crux of the fucking problem to begin with? Brian not paying any fucking attention the whole time we were together, treating me like...treating me like someone who doesn't need reassurance because that's who he'd prefer I was.

Well, it wasn't the real me, and the guy I thought was just being patient when me because he wanted me to be happy...God, he felt just as fake.

We weren't talking anymore. I could barely fucking look at him when he came into the diner, and I wasn't up for making small talk with anyone, least of all him. My tips took a nosedive because I couldn't smile and my hand was acting up so I was dropping plates and my ass was deflating along with my appetite. I didn't trick or go out or see anybody. I lost my academic scholarship. I'd catch Brian looking at me when I was working and I couldn't even gather up any feelings about that, and God, I've always had feelings about Brian looking at me. Everything was unraveling.

I lost both of them in one day.

“You should get back out there,” Daphne said. “Meet somebody new.”

“I think I need to be alone for a while,” I said. But it felt like I was going to be alone forever.

**

So I'd been barely awake when I wasn't muffling sobs into my apron for about five weeks when I got a phone call from PIFA, and if you recall I'd been failing tests and losing scholarships so I was pretty sure I was about to be thrown out and honestly I couldn't bring myself to care.

But it was yet another person from student affairs.

“So as you know, you're required to complete an internship this coming semester,” she said. “And someone saw your work and requested you. I guess that website profile really paid off!”

I am not an idiot. “Where's the request from?”

“Uh, it's an advertising agency, let me check...”

“Yeah,” I said. “I'm sure it is.”

**

You can make a whole story out of me accepting the job at Vanguard because I wanted to see Brian, or because I wanted to spite Brian, or...I don't know, something with Brian, and look, I'm not saying there wasn't an undercurrent of _something_ still there because as stated I'm not an idiot and I'm also, you know, wise to how this story ends, but honestly I think the main reason I went to Vanguard was because I needed a fucking internship and I was too goddamn depressed to find anything on my own.

And once I figured that out, I was pretty sure that's why Brian had gotten me the job. Because he'd seen poor sad little Sunshine at the diner and thought he wasn't capable of finding his own job. And if you think the fact that I just admitted that that was, well, kind of true meant that I wouldn't be pissed at _him_ for thinking it...ha.

The job was good for me, though, and that was clear pretty much immediately. I needed some sort of new challenge, and the Vanguard art department was dynamic and talented and scared to death of Brian, which added a little extra amusement. I didn't tell anyone that I knew him, and existing in the same space as him with no one knowing we were connected made me feel powerful in a way nothing had in a very long time.

He called me into his office at the end of my first week. It was late, almost seven, and I had been about to leave, and to my surprise he looked like he was on his way out too. I tried to remember if he'd ever come home before seven when we lived together. Even back right after the bashing, when I was still too shaky to be alone for a whole day and he would come and check in on me and sometimes stay at the loft for lunch, he'd go back to work and stay until eight at the earliest. But I guess he wasn't partner then.

Still, seeing him all packed up and ready to go didn't exactly endear him to me, not that I think anything could have at this point.

I crossed my arms and stood in front of his desk.

“You can sit,” he said.

I didn't. “Did you need something, Mr. Kinney?”

He cocked an eyebrow, but only for a second. “It's customary to check on new employees at the end of the first week and make sure they're settling in.”

“Yes, I know,” I say. “Because Mr. Vance already did.”

“Yes, I know,” he mimicked. “But I thought you might feel more comfortable talking to me.”

I gave him my sweetest smile. “You thought wrong.”

He walked around to my side of the desk and leaned against it, legs crossed at the ankles. “You're finding everything okay?”

“Yeah, I found the bathroom all by my little self.”

“No problems so far?”

“Not a one.”

“Any questions, then?”

“Uh, yeah, just the one. Why the fuck am I here?”

He shrugged. “Don't ask me, you took the job.”

“You offered it.”

“Me? You think I'm in charge of hiring interns? What the fuck do you think I do all day, twiddle my thumbs and think of schemes to...what is it exactly you think I'm doing here, trying to win you back?”

“I think maybe you felt bad about fucking up my life and thought you'd throw me a rescue for old time's sake.”

“I don't and I didn't.”

I gave him a look. “You'r really going to pretend it's a coincidence I'm here?”

He made a big show of asking like the conversation bored him. “I didn't do it for you.”

I snorted.

“Believe it or don't,” he said. “But I didn't. No skin off my ass.” He picked a file off his desk and handed it to me. “I want you to take the lead on strategizing for the new Eyeconic campaign. They didn't like the last thing they came up with down there and you're our freshest blood, so...come up with something brilliant.”

“Oh. Okay.”

He kept watching me. “Take your ideas to Angela and she'll run them up to me. And if you have any questions about what you can get done in the amount of time we have—”

“I ask Garrett.”

“You ask Garrett.” He nodded. “Good.” He looked at me. “How are you getting here, you're taking the bus?”

“Yeah.”

“Talk to Annette in billing and she can get you bus passes for free. And you need to get your badge still.”

I started to leave.

“Also?” he said. “We have really good accommodations available for disabled employees, so if there's anything you need and you're not getting, talk to Maria in HR, all right?”

I turned around and looked at him.

He shrugged, all casual. “Or you can talk to me, but I'm getting the feeling that's not gonna happen.”

“It's nice you're still capable of learning new information. At your age.”

“Don't flirt with your boss.”

“Ohhh, I assure you I am not.”

**

So I settled in at Vanguard. I liked the people I worked with and I avoided the hell out of Brian. Not that it was hard; there were about nine layers of management between me and Mr. Kinney himself (oh, come on, you know the end of this story, I've got to sneak _some_ kind of affection in here) so it's not like he had his finger on the pulse of all our daily activities, but he still found his way down to the art department once a day or so to circle around and check on all of us. He never spent any extra time on me or treated me like anything other than a regular employee, and at the time I wasn't as familiar as I am now with how Brian runs a company, so I didn't know if the micromanaging was something he did all the time or something for my dubious benefit, and it's not like I could really ask. (Answer: Brian, surprising no one, micromanages whether or not I'm there.)

Speaking of micromanaging, I'd noticed that when the other interns and I got our tasks for the day, mine was _way_ more itemized than everyone else's. They'd get maybe five bullet points to complete, whereas I would have easily fifty, not because I had more work, but because all of mine was broken down into all these sub-steps. And like...I'm not going to lie, it was helpful, and it meant I wasn't nearly as confused as the other interns constantly were, but I didn't know why Brian—because I _had_ to assume it was Brian—wanted me here if he thought I was such a fucking idiot that I couldn't figure out stuff that everyone else could.

We'll get back to that later.

I was messing around on my computer with the new logo idea for Eyeconic in the middle of my second week when Garrett came up behind me and said something I didn't hear. I turned towards him. “Sorry, what?”

“Try purple for this bit,” he said.

I changed the color, and he nodded. “That's really good,” he said. “Do me a favor, print that out and run it upstairs?”

Upstairs meant _to Brian._ “Uh, I think Cameron wanted to get some face time with—”

“Cameron didn't put together this logo,” Garrett said. “Bring it up.”

Oookay then. I printed out some comps and took the elevator back up to Brian's office. I knocked on his door and said, “Excuse me, Mr. Kinney?” with none of the aforementioned affection.

He held up his hand without looking up from his computer. I brought it over.

He glanced at it, then rolled his chair back and gave it a longer look. “Well,” he said. “This is lovely.”

“I'll report that back.”

He raised an eyebrow. “That's it? Do you know how rare praise from me is? Ask around. Did you do this?”

“Yes.”

“Starting to believe I didn't hire you out of charity now?”

I shifted my weight to my other foot. “Can I do anything else for you, Mr. Kinney?”

“Uh, yeah, actually, quick question. Are you going to be a little bitch the entire time you're working here, or is there some kind of timetable?”

I glared at him.

“Is that my answer?” he said. “Because that could still be a limited-time-only sort of death stare.”

“Fuck you.”

“Language, Taylor.”

“I'm not being a little bitch. I'm just not going to come in here all fucking peppy and happy to see you when you ruined my fucking relationship.”

“We're really going to do this? Okay.” He rolled his eyes and got up and shut the door. “I did not,” he said. “Ruin your pathetic little relationship.”

“You _told him to take the deal._ ”

He closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them he looked straight at me. “I'm sorry that I freaked you out like that. That was fucked up and I didn't see it coming.”

I swallowed. “I don't want to talk about that.”

“Yeah, I know, you want to talk about your...” He sighed and looked away, then back to me. “Okay. Fine. You want to hear the truth, I'll tell you the truth. Your relationship or whatever the fuck you want to call it was ruined the second the agent offered Ethan that deal and it didn't bother him enough to turn it down for himself, only for you. There was no coming back from that. It was over then and there was no fixing it. He was going to turn down the deal for you, and he would have resented you for holding him back, and you would have hated yourself for taking the opportunity from him.”

I didn't say anything.

“You know I'm right,” he said, lightly.

“I don't know shit.”

“Finally something we can agree on.”

“We were happy,” I said, and then I winced at how goddamn pathetic I was and the mocking that was definitely about to take place.

But he looked me right in the eyes and said, “I know you were.” He cleared his throat and went back to his desk. “But that wasn't...” He shrugged. “It was a fairy tale.”

“What the fuck do you know about it?”

“I know how you treat people you love,” he said, simply, like it was fucking nothing.

I wanted to hit him. Or kiss him. Or run. Or stay.

Brian flipped through some papers. “And if you really loved him, you wouldn't have asked him to sacrifice his future for you,” he said.

“I didn't—”

“And if he really loved you,” Brian said, as gently as he's ever said anything. “He never would have asked you to hide.”

I bought that for a second before I realized how these events actually fucking went down. “You asked me to hide,” I said. “You talked him into it, you put me in that fucking position.”

I waited for the _well, I don't love you._

“I know,” he said softly, and when I kept staring him down, he shrugged at me. “What do you want from me? I said sorry. One apology per customer.”

“I want you to say you shouldn't have gotten involved,” I said. “That you should have just fucking let our relationship run itself into the ground if you're so fucking smart and it was going to happen anyway.”

He blinked slowly and pulled his lips into his mouth. “I wouldn't have done if it I'd thought it would scare you like that.”

That was the best I was going to get out of him and I knew it, so...okay. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

“Because something bad happened to you, Christ. I'm not a monster.”

“I just want to know why you did it. If I don't deserve to be in that situation, if the relationship was going to fail anyway, why fucking intervene?”

“Because...fuck, you both were going to martyr yourselves to death. He's talented, he deserves the deal.”

“Like you give a shit about him.”

“No, but lack of ambition kills my sex drive, and we can't have that.” He bit his lip and looked at me. “And you would have stayed with him after he turned it down, even when he was blaming you for it and treating you like shit, because you would have felt obligated after he'd made this fucking _sacrifice_ for you. And you would have been miserable, and he would have been miserable to you. And you...” He shrugged. “Jesus, if we're talking about things you don't deserve.”

“It is not your job to protect me,” I said.

“I never said it was. Sometimes I do volunteer work.”

I watched him. “So you didn't do it because...I mean, you weren't trying to break us up so you could...”

He scoffed. “What, sit here and watch you run in slow motion into my arms? Okay, fine, I wasn't anticipating the panic attack, but I think I'm smart enough to know you weren't going to fucking like me interfering. And do you see me trying to get you back?”

“No,” I said softly.

“Okay then.” He sighed and ran his hand over his eyes. “I'm sorry that Ethan got this offer,” he said. “It was an unwinnable situation for you, and it's not fair, and it's nobody's fault. But there was no saving the two of you after it happened.”

I looked down.

He said, “And this is what I tried to fucking tell you at Babylon that night about fairy tales.”

“Yeah, I get it, they're not real.”

“Christ, can I finish a fucking sentence around here?”

“Sorry.”

He tapped his fingers on the desk, and I looked up.

“They're real,” he said, his eyes so dark and warm on mine. “They just have endings.”

**

A month passed at Vanguard. Vance praised my work. My grades went back up. I got out of bed every morning.

I...stopped avoiding Brian. It was just a lot of work, okay? And I already had a lot of work. And it's not like I was seeing him all the time. He was a partner. I was a little intern.

I was at the vending machine one day when he came up next to me and said, “Have had a look at Mitchell's bangs?”

“Uh, I have been trying very hard not to.”

“Is that a fireable offense, do you think?”

“You're so bad.”

“Don't flirt with your boss,” he growled in my ear, and he smacked my back with a manilla folder on his way down the hall.

**

He came down to the art department early once, when I was the only one in—the shitty bus schedule meant I either had to get in fifteen minutes early or half an hour late—and held up the newest issue of Rage.

I laughed, the first time I'd laughed with him in...God, and he grinned. “What,” I said, “Do you want me to sign it?”

“I like the trumpet,” he said. “Did I forget you playing the trumpet?”

“Somehow I don't think that's something you'd forget.”

“At least it wasn't a violin,” he said, and I threw an eraser at him.

**

The next time he was in the art department was this shitty all-hands-on-deck situation where we had to redo these mock-ups at the last minute. It felt like every fucking person who worked at the company was down there barking orders, and I was having trouble making out what anyone was saying with all the noise, and I was drawing as fast as I could and my hand was not having it, and the whole thing was so goddamn stressful.

I didn't even realize Brian was behind me until I heard his voice in my ear. “Take a break,” he said.

“No, I can't—”

“It's fine,” he said. “Take a break.”

I went outside and took a few deep breaths, and just when I was about to come back in, Brian came out.

“You good?” he said. He handed me a cup of coffee.

I held it to the inside of my wrist. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“Don't kill yourself over this,” he said. “It's just fuckin' advertising. Not the end of the world.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

**

I knocked on his office door one day and he beckoned me with two fingers without looking up. “Are you any good at Minesweeper?” he said.

“I'm amazing. Are you going to Mel and Lindz's thing on Saturday?”

“Yeah, Lindsey will have my balls if I don't.”

“Could youuu maybe pick me up? And bring me home after? Their house is so fucking annoying to get to.”

He groaned. “Fine.”

“Thank youuuuu.”

“Uh, quick question.”

I paused at the door. “Hmm?”

“Where the fuck are you living now?”

I laughed. “Oh, shit. I'm at Daph's.”

He thought about this. “Does she even have a second bedroom?”

“She has a very nice couch.”

“You make great decisions.”

“Oh, I'm aware.”

“Text me her address, I don't know it.”

“Okay.”

**

“So what the fuck is going on with you two?” Daphne asked me that night, as I was getting ready. “Are you back together?”

“God no. We're...” I pulled my shirt off. “I don't know. I guess we're friends.”

“Friends,” she repeated.

“Yeah.” I didn't know what else to call it. We sent jokey emails back and forth a couple times a week. We'd go out for lunch sometimes if Brian heard of some new restaurant he wanted to try and he'd catch me up on whatever updates I wasn't already getting from Michael or Debbie or that I hadn't overheard at the diner. We didn't ever talk about anything heavy, but sometimes he'd ask me an opinion on something he wanted to buy and then go ahead and buy it anyway or he'd ask me how about a homework assignment, and sometimes we'd even bring up stuff from when we were together: remember the time we saw that guy wearing two hats, remember when Emmett was in the paper for hitting that guy in the eye with a stiletto, remember when Debbie made that completely inedible lemon meringue pie, remember, remember, remember.

“Sexy friends?” Daphne said.

“No! Just...regular friends.”

“Well..have you worked out any of the shit from why you broke up? Are you still mad at him?”

“We don't have to work anything out,” I said. “That's the beauty of being casual friends.”

She snorted. “We'll see how long that lasts.”

“It'll last,” I said.

**

We stopped at the drive-thru on the way back from Mel and Lindz's because our dinner there there had made Debbie's lemon meringue pie seem like, I don't know, food. We parked and ate fries and Brian scrolled through the radio.

“Did you hear Michael made them rip up the contract?” Brian said. “I'm sure that won't end up biting anyone in the ass.”

“Christ, that's fucking stupid.”

“I know.”

“And I know a thing or two about ripping up contracts.”

“I'm saying!”

I laughed and stuffed some fries in my mouth. “You know she's worried about you. Lindsay.”

“She's always worried about me. It's very grating.”

“She asked me if you were sleeping.”

“What'd you tell her?”

“I said with how shitty you look you better not be sleeping, or we're going to have to run your blood work or something.”

“Ha, ha.” He nodded at my hand shaking. “You okay?”

“Yeah, it's fine.”

“What...the fuck are you doing to those fries.”

I looked down. “What?”

“Are you dipping them in mustard?”

“Yeah, why.”

“I can't believe I used to let you cook for me,” he said.

I shoved him, and he tried one of the fries in mustard and the look of abject horror he shot me made me cover my face, I was laughing so hard. He knocked my head to the side as I caught my breath and groused that I was going to give myself another fucking asthma attack.

“Fuck,” I said, wiping my eyes.

Brian watched me sideways for a second, and then “Bad Moon Rising,” came on the radio, and Brian sang, _“Theeeere's a bathroom on the right,”_ and tossed a fry into his mouth.

Daphne gave me a look when I got home.

“We're friends,” I said.

“Sure. Naked friends.”

**

I didn't go out much during that time, but, you know, a boy's got to eat, so I'd hit up Babylon to bring a trick into the back room from time to time. Brian was, without exception, always there, usually in the center of the dance floor with a drink in his hand, and he was, without exception, always tweaked out of his fucking mind.

I never approached him at Babylon. It just felt like a line I shouldn't cross, and he never mentioned seeing me there and I never mentioned going.

But then there was this one night, and I guess in retrospect this was the start of shit really hitting the fan, but it hardly felt like anything at first. I'd had a frustrating evening trying to get this homework assignment done, this research assignment on Renoir that felt too massive for me to know where to start and I ended up just staring at the assignment like it was written in a different language for an hour before I decided I needed to get out of the house and fuck all the confusion out of me, so here I was. I was at the bar getting a drink, scoping out my target for the evening, and the next thing I knew there were his hands on my waist and his cologne in the air like a drug and voice in my hair, dangerous and low: “Dance with me.”

He was fucking spent that night, his pupils dilated to all hell, his skin hot and dry against my cheek, and I heard the weak “Okay,” come out of me before I'd even decided to say it, but was there really any chance I was going to say anything else?

He pulled me to the dance floor and draped his arms over my neck and rested his forehead against mine, and we moved together to the music, and God, something inside me literally hurt from how much I'd missed this. I've always loved dancing with him—I still do—and I'd let myself forget it, but here we were moving together like one body and I'd forgotten how easy it was, how the curve of his body fit into the curve of mine and we didn't have to talk and we didn't have to think and holy fucking shit he was so goddamn sexy, and I'd forgotten how much _sense_ we made.

We kept dancing, and he kept buying me drinks, and the part of me that wanted to prove Daphne wrong was very, very dwarfed by the part of me that couldn't remember exactly what his lips tasted like.

If you've never been that close to someone who you want so badly, never been breathing with your lips one inch, half an inch, a quarter of an inch away from his...I don't know how to describe it. It hurts. Your heartbeat becomes your whole body. His heartbeat.

_He's wrong for you._

_He's not the person you thought he was._

_He didn't know what would scare you._

_He doesn't see you._

But right then he was looking right at me.

One of his hands was on my waist, and then my hips, and then my thigh, and the smell of his sweat was heady and sweet and everything I'd ever wanted, and then—

He pulled away, suddenly, and nodded to someone over my shoulder. “I'm gonna go,” he told me.

I said, “Brian,” and God knows what I was even going to say after that, if I even knew any words at that moment that weren't his name, but I put my hand on his chest and he shook his head and slid my hand off of him and his fingers were so warm around my wrist and then he was gone, disappeared into the back room with some guy he snagged without even stopping.

I turned my head up and caught my breath and was for the first time aware of how very much I'd had to drink, and I honestly considered going home and just jerking off thinking about Brian like I'd been doing for the rest of this fucking month, but but two guys pulled me in to dance with them and I let myself go, eventually pulling the sluttier of the two into the back room so I could come and go home.

The guy clearly had an agenda, turning his back to me right away and arching himself against the wall, so I rolled on a condom and leaned into his shoulder and tried to lose myself in the way he moaned as I fit inside of him, but the alcohol and the adrenaline and the bass beat in my stomach were competing for my attention and this guy wasn't enough. I looked around and I honestly don't think I was looking for Brian, not consciously at least, but, well...Deb said it the best, all those years ago, didn't she?

Everybody's looking for Brian.

And there he was, a few groaning couples down from me, leaning against the wall, his eyes unfocused and straight ahead. And maybe he'd already known I was there and had been glancing over from time to time, I don't know, but it wasn't a second after I'd found him that he turned his head and looked at me, and then away, and then back to me and not away, this time.

His lips parted slightly, and his breathing picked up, and I thrust faster into this guy on the wall, and there was so much in Brian's eyes, arousal and pain and and drugs and me, and I know I'm no expert on sound but I swear at that moment I could almost hear his whisper, the things he used to say to me in the dark, and I came without looking up from his lips.

**

I didn't know how the fuck I was going to face him at work the next day, but to be fair I didn't know how the fuck I was going to walk or talk or breathe at work the next day, because holy Christ was I hungover. I was nineteen fucking years old, I was supposed to be able to drink whatever I wanted! I have the worst luck with this shit.

My hand was completely out of commission that day, but, well, Brian wasn't kidding about those disability accommodations. I tipped off Maria in HR that I was having a bad day, and if she could tell it was because I'd drunk the Monongahela River she kept that revelation to herself, and I don't know what she told Angela but whatever it was, Angela told me to ignore my assignment for the day—which, strangely, already didn't involve any more use of my hand than was strictly necessary, a lot of supervising and consulting and other stuff that really didn't seem like intern work, but hey—and sit in on some meetings this morning and report back to her what projects were going to be coming in.

Brian wasn't in the first two meetings, and at first I thought maybe he'd stayed home, because God, I don't know what drugs he'd had in his system before we met up, but it sure as fuck was something, and once we were dancing he definitely drank more than I did. But there he was in the third meeting, looking tired but no more tired than he always looked lately, and he presented a few new clients to the marketing team with his usual swagger and smile and never looked at me, but when the meeting was over he pressed a bottle of water into my hand.

The room was sort of spinning, so I stayed there as it emptied and sipped from the bottle, and eventually it was just me and Cynthia still in there. “You all right there, slugger?” she said to me.

“Heh. Yeah. Long night.”

"I can see that."

“Brian didn't say anything, did he?” I said, then winced.

But she just laughed. “Like I'd tell you if he did. I like my job.” She swept some leftover papers off the table. “But he didn't.”

“Ugh.”

I was about to blurt out that I didn't know how the fuck he was functioning, but I thankfully had a little bit more common sense than that buried somewhere under the nausea, and also it occurred to me that...given what I'd seen of Brian every time I went to Babylon, and given he looked exactly as tired today as he did every morning...fuck.

I said, “Um, Cynthia?” as she was leaving.

She turned around. “Yeah, sweet potato.” She always liked me.

“Is Brian...okay? Like is everything okay with...” I'd just seen Gus, it couldn't be Gus. “I don't know, with everything?”

She crossed her arms and watched me.

“I know it's not my business,” I said quickly. “It's just that...I mean, I think he's been going out a lot and uh...drinking a lot, and I remember he was like that when his dad died and when he was turning thirty so...I just wondered if something was going on, I guess.”

“Justin,” she said. “Seriously?”

“I know. It's not my business. Just um...can you tell me when it started? I can figure it out from that.”

She gave me this long, long look, and you're going to think I should have figured it out from that—fuck, you probably can't believe that I hadn't figured it out already—but...well, that's kind of the point of this little story, isn't it?

“I'd say it's been going on for about eight months now,” she said, and I counted back in my head, and then I counted again, while she watched me, that's the moment when I swear to God I physically felt something click in place in my head.

And I know you're frustrated with me. I'm frustrated with me too. But I honestly, I swear to God, it legitimately did not occur to me until that second that Brian was sad that I'd left him. Yes, he'd asked me if I wanted to come back a few times, but I thought that was because he thought I needed to be rescued, like he was offering to take me in like...I don't know, like whatever the fuck Ben and Michael were doing with Hunter. I didn't think it was because he wanted me back, because he, God forbid, missed me. When he'd interfered with Ethan and the contract I thought, okay, fuck, maybe he does want me back after all if he's willing to go through all this underhanded shit to try to make me single, but he'd explained that one away and fuck if that had ever sounded like him to begin with.

I swear to God, I hadn't known he was hurt.

And you probably don't believe me, but you don't know what it's like in my head.

And neither did Brian.

**

The day dragged, because I was still on rest for my hand, and rest meant time to think, and the only thought in my head was _you hurt Brian._ I ducked into the bathroom at lunch and just sat by myself in the stall for ages, breathing into my shitty hand and trying not to fucking freak out or...I don't know, punish myself for what I'd done to him.

I swear to God I never meant to hurt him. And I know that that doesn't matter because I did anyway, and I know I'm not a good person in this story, but fuck, you have got to believe me.

He let me go. I asked him if he cared if I left and he didn't say anything.

So I thought he didn't.

And God help me, I was still so, so goddamn confused.

I managed to keep myself in some semblance of togetherness through the day. The art department cleared out, and I made excuses why I had to stay late and went upstairs where I could watch the executives go. Brian hadn't left yet; he probably left earlier nowadays so there'd be more time to go out, I realized. Christ.

But that evening he stayed because, I don't know, maybe the universe couldn't handle one more fucking night of us not having this conversation. Fuck, I didn't think I could take more minute.

I knocked on his door as soon as the last person left. He raised his head, and he looked almost...afraid of me? It was weird. I must have looked really serious or something.

“Can I talk to you?” I said.

He leaned back and gestured carelessly for me to come in, and I shut the door behind me and pulled one of his chairs up on the other side of the desk and sat.

For a moment I thought I was never going to get the words out, that they'd just stay in my throat until I choked on them, and then without even meaning to I was talking.

“Did you care when I left?”

He was confused. “When?”

“When I...when I left, when I really left. At the Rage party.”

“What the fuck? Why are we talking about this?”

“Because I...” I shook my head. “Did you not want me to go?”

He just stared at me.

“I don't know what that means,” I said. “The way you're looking at me, I don't know what that means.” And I think that was the first time I ever said anything to him to that effect.

“What the fuck are you trying to get here?” he asked me.

“Nothing, I'm not trying to manipulate you or anything, I just—”

“So why are you asking me these fucking stupid questions?”

“Because I'm fucking stupid!” I said. “Because I don't know the answers.”

He still looked so unsure, like I was a dog that maybe might bite him. “You don't know if I cared that you left.”

I shook my head.

“What the fuck,” he said plainly.

“I still don't know what that means,” I whispered.

He got up and paced around some. “Jesus Christ, Justin. You lived with me for a fucking year. We fucking...you think you just walked out the door and I what, shrugged it off?”

“You acted like—”

“What the fuck do you think I am?” he said. “Jesus, I realize I'm not a fucking Novotny boohooing about every fucking thing that comes my way, but do you think I'm a fucking robot? You think someone that I...that you could walk out and it's nothing?”

“Someone that you what?”

He shook his head and pointed at me. “You're not tricking me into some shit.”

“I'm not trying to trick you into anything!”

“Oh, bullshit.”

“I don't know the end of that sentence,” I said.

He sneered at me. “Don't give me that faux-innocent shit. That was a lot cuter when you were a virgin.”

“Did you love me?”

He pointed to the door instantly. “Get out.”

“Brian.”

“I am your fucking boss, get out of my office.”

“Michael said you loved me,” I said. “And I thought—”

“You thought _what?_ ”

“You didn't come to Vermont!” I yelled. “You got me a fucking hustler for my birthday! You wouldn't stay home one night with me and have the stupid fucking picnic on the floor, you wouldn't...you laughed at me. You rolled your eyes at me, you didn't—”

“I didn't what? I didn't buy you flowers? I didn't serenade you with violin music?”

“I don't care about any of that!”

“Then what the fuck is it you want?”

“I want to understand one fucking thing that is happening to me!” I yelled. “I want to understand what the fucking goddamn fuck happened the last year of my life because it's like it happened to somebody else and I can't even remember it and nothing is making sense and you won't just fucking tell me—”

“I never needed to tell you!” he yelled.

“That was—”

“You want to fucking count out off evidence on your fingers, Sunshine, I can do it too.” He loomed over me. “ _Being mean to me has never really worked. You can't push me away. I'm onto you. Brian Kinney gives a shit._ ”

“That was before.”

“You don't get to come in here and cry to me that you left because you didn't get your fucking platitudes when you—”

“I'm not asking for platitudes!”

“—are the one who was in that loft the very first night reading my fucking mind, knowing where my hand was going when no one had ever fucking touched you before—”

I got up. “That was _before!_ ”

“—forcing your way in and never letting me have a goddamn thought and being fucking everything and now you're trying to come in here telling me all of that was—”

“BEFORE!” I screamed. “Before before _before,_ it was _BEFORE!_ ”

“Before _what?_ ” he yelled back, but the words had barely left his mouth before he knew, and everything changed for him in that second. I know because he told me later, but I knew in that moment, too, and I am, as we have discovered, very, very bad at knowing things in the moment from people's faces. But even I couldn't miss this.

Brian reeled. He took steps back from me and he turned around with his hands over his eyes, and he made a noise like...well. Like he'd been hit.

“I'm sorry,” I whispered.

“Don't.” He turned back around to me. “The whole...It's about _that?_ ”

“It's _always about that!_ This is...I live there.”

“Jesus, it was a fucking year.”

And all of a sudden I wasn't sorry anymore. “I fucking know how long ago it was, Brian.”

“No, I—”

“This is it,” I said. “This is why I went to Ethan.”

Brian shut up, then, and watched me.

“He wasn't looking at me waiting for me to be a person who fucking died at his goddamn prom,” I said, and goddamn I hated myself so much for crying but there was no stopping it at this point. “He wasn't waiting around tapping his foot wondering why the hell I wasn't fixed yet. He didn't know _Sunshine._ He knew this fucked up piece of shit who can't read a goddamn situation and who needs to hear the fucking words and I know that's not who you fucking want and it's not who I want either but it's what he fucking got and he was there and you didn't see it, you didn't see me! I was fucking dying not knowing what the fuck was going on in whatever the fuck you want to call whatever the fuck we were doing and you didn't see it! You never saw me! You think I'm the same person and you're tired of waiting for me to get the hell over it and _so am I_ but here we fucking are, here I am, this is all I have to offer and you think it's some pathetic little faggot who needs someone to fucking buy him roses so why am I even _here?_ ”

Brian ran his hands down his face. “Fuck.”

I laughed or cried or something. “That's it?”

“No, Jesus, give me a minute.”

But I didn't. I got the fuck out of there.

And yet again, he didn't stop me.

I went back down to the art department, ostensibly to get my shit and go home, but once I was down there I just...God, broke the fuck down. I sat on one of the stools and held my head and cried so hard I thought I would throw up.

I felt just...unloveable. That's the only way I can describe it.

I finally pulled myself together enough that I thought I could get through the bus ride back home—Daphne's—before bursting into tears again, so I got up and started shoving my shit into my messenger bag, and while I was doing it my eyes fell on one of the old schedules I'd gotten, those itemized lists of all the steps it took to complete a task.

And I don't know why it clicked for me then and not before. Maybe because I was already beating myself up for being fucked up from the bashing, or maybe because the fucking universe couldn't take me not getting it for one more goddamn second.

But all of a sudden it made sense.

I remembered mornings standing paralyzed in the loft because I wanted to make an omelet and goddamn it I knew how to make an omelet but I couldn't break it down in my head and the entire thing felt so big and overwhelming. Times Brian told me to pick a movie for us to watch and I'd start crying. When he'd tell me to come to bed and I couldn't decide if I should take off my pants first or my shirt and so I would just stand there, afraid to get it wrong.

And well, friends.

I finally got it.

**

I waited until late to go to the loft, but when he opened the door he was still in the clothes he'd worn to work, his jacket off, his tie loose and disheveled around his neck. He looked so tired. He was beautiful.

“You wrote out detailed task lists for me because of my shitty executive functioning,” I said, which is probably not the way most people would start a conversation that they were hoping would be ridiculously romantic, but Brian and I are not most people.

He turned around and went back into the loft, but he didn't close the door, so I followed. It all looked how I remembered, new coffee table notwithstanding.

He poured himself a drink.

“You knew I wasn't fine,” I said.

“Well-adjusted people don't normally burst into tears in my office, no.”

“Not tonight,” I said. “This whole time.”

He would tell me how to make omelets, step by step.

He would hold me and help me pick the movie.

He would stand behind me and whisper, “Shirt first, I'll do your pants.”

He told me to take a break because my hand was bothering me and told me advertising was not the end of the world.

I cleared my throat. “You offered me accommodations,” I said. “For disabled employees.”

He drained the glass.

“You called me disabled,” I said.

“You are disabled,” he said, sounding annoyed, but I knew he wasn't.

I knew he wasn't.

“No, I know,” I said. “It's just...you know, too.”

“Well, you've fucked up your hand jobs enough times,” he said, and I smiled a little and dropped my bag on the floor.

“You did see me,” I said.

He sat down on one of the stools at the counter. “Let's not give me too much credit. I just spent two hours researching difficulties with nonverbal cues with PTSD and frontal lobe trauma. Could have done that a year and a half ago.”

“Well, I could have told you.”

He ran his hand over his face. “Yeah, telling me's always on the table.” He sighed. “Justin, I'm never going to be the...I'm not the guy who's going to write your name in lights. I'm not.”

I probably shouldn't, given my shitty brain, given the fucking fragility of the situation, have known we were talking about getting back together before that moment, but I don't know, it didn't surprise me. “Why is everything all or nothing with you?” I said gently. “I'm not asking for fucking...” I shook my head. “You know what you said at the hospital?”

He shrugged a little.

“You were saying that that...what he had for me, he didn't know me, we hadn't been through all that shit, so it wasn't really love, it was just...”

“Violin music,” we said, together.

I nodded. “See, I thought you were saying no one could ever love me after they'd been through all that.”

Brian made that noise again. _”Fuck.”_

“And that's...not what you were saying, was it?”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Okay, I'll take that as a no.” I sat down carefully on the back of the couch, facing him. “So I'm not asking for anything you don't mean, I'm just...I just want the things that you do mean. Jesus, trust me, after Ethan, I've had enough of the metaphors.”

He watched me. “Of the violin music.”

“Yeah.”

He got up heavily and came and sat next to me, drink in hand, and for a minute we were just quiet, looking out at the empty loft and the street sign blinking through the window.

Except I thought I was starting to hear that clock ticking again.

“You got me that job for you,” I said. “That's why you said it wasn't for me.”

He drank with a shrug, and then he looked at me sideways and, honest to fucking God, steeled himself and said, “Yes,” and holy shit, I was ready to jump back in with him right then and there.

Brian Kinney meant yes so he said yes, because I asked him to.

Can you even...God. Anyway.

“You wanted to keep an eye on me,” I said. “You wanted to see that I was okay.”

“Well, that panic attack was pretty fucking scary,” he said lightly. “And you were moping around the diner like someone sold your pony. Figured someone needed to be keeping watch, making sure you didn't do a swan dive off wherever the fuck you were living nowadays, and God knows the rest of this family's fucking useless. You ever tried getting Michael to check his voicemail?”

“So why didn't you tell me that?”

He shrugged again. “Thought you might take offense. Some _I don't need looking after_ bullshit.”

I thought about that. “I think right now I need to know that somebody saw that I was struggling,” I said. “And that...they thought I deserved to get what I needed to...not.”

It took me a minute to get the courage to look at him, but when I did, he was looking at me, and our faces were so, so close.

“What else do you need,” he said, softly.

Here goes.

“Maybe...” I swallowed. “Maybe something that doesn't have an ending.” I had to lighten that up a little. “Even when you're kicking and screaming for one.”

Brian was still for just a second, then he nodded slowly. “I might know just the thing.”

“Okay. Um.” I looked down and put my hand on his wrist because I couldn't not touch him anymore. “What do you need?”

“You know what I need.”

“I think maybe the thing is that I don't, actually.”

He groaned and put his head back. “You are really testing me.”

“I know. You're so close, though.”

“I know.”

“Think about the things I'm going to do to you with my tongue after you say it.”

“I need a drink first,” he said, and he got up and started towards the kitchen, and I laughed a little and looked around the loft to try to...I don't know. Collect myself. I figured I'd have a minute.

But he spoke before he'd had the drink. Before he made it all the way to the kitchen.

“I need you to come home.”

He was standing there barefoot in half of a suit. Looking right at me.

“That's it,” he said.

“That can't be it.”

He popped his tongue into his cheek. “Sure it can.”

And of course it wouldn't be it. Of course we would continue asking each other for things, begging, pushing each other, sreaming at each other, for the rest of our goddamn lives. He's never going to be everything I want him to be, and God knows I won't be either.

It's not a fairy tale.

Fairy tales have endings. 

"Okay," I said.

And I couldn't wait any longer. I couldn't. But I still somehow managed to walk towards him slowly, and he stood right where he was, looking so incredibly goddamn sure, and I got up on my toes and I put my arms around his neck and I kissed him.

There are moments in your life where everything makes sense, even if you're me. If you're lucky, maybe you get two or three, your whole life. I swear to God, I only need that one. I'm good now.

Kissing Brian was like pulling into port after you've been at sea. It was coming up for air. It was something I'd forgotten that I'd given up on trying to remember. He had the front of my shirt clenched in his fist, and I had my hands on his face, and the loft could have gone up in fucking flames around us and I would not have stopped kissing him. I wouldn't even have noticed.

His lips were so gentle, and he was being so patient, but he cupped the back of my head and pulled me in closer and he made this desperate noise in his throat without taking his mouth off of mine and he felt so vulnerable to me, so fucking open, and I would have done anything in the goddamn world to protect him from ever being hurt again. I would take down a lion. I would fight an army. I would get him the fuck out of this loft if it caught on fire.

Because I was home again.

And it never ended.


End file.
